Conservative Media’s Race Problem: Only 2% African American Staff

“The African-Americans love me,” Donald Trump said in January 2016. However, evidence of that love is as elusive as a unicorn. Recent polls indicate Trump’s black support is somewhere between none and none adjacent.

According to the United States census, African Americans make up 12.3% of the American population. The percentage of eligible African American voters who identify with the Republican party, has remained steady, about 7%, in the recent years; but has dropped precipitously with the election of Donald Trump.

And yet, the percentage of African Americans who work for the nation’s top 13 conservative media sources is just 2.46%.

Conservative Media’s Race Problem: Of the 366 positions listed on the websites of the top 13 conservative media companies, 357 of those positions (editor, reporter, contributing editor, writer, board of trustees) are held by whites. Meanwhile, only 9 positions are held by African Americans.

10 of the sites:

Washington Free Beacon

Daily Caller (founded by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson)

Townhall

Lifezette (founded by FOX News’ Laura Ingraham)

The Blaze

The Daily Wire

National Review

The American Conservative

American Spectator

The Weekly Standard

…have no known African American employees what-so-ever.

Meanwhile, 3 sites:

Breitbart

Newsmax

PJ Media

…employee a total of 9 African Americans among them.

The Weekly Standard employs the most people. 64 people in total, per their website. Of the 64 people on staff, 64 of them are white.

Among the 13 conservative media sites, none has an African American editor, none have any African Americans on their board of Trustees, none have African American reporters or contributing editors.

What accounts for the paucity of African American hires at the nation’s top conservative media sites? It may have a lot to do with what even the site, The American Conservative, conceded in January of 2016, that ‘black voters have felt unwelcome in the ranks for decades.’ They were speaking of the Republican party, but could have easily been discussing conservative media.

And why do African Americans feels unwelcome in the GOP? The American Conservative postulated back in 2016 that the “GOP has largely abandoned its legacy of civil rights activism.” Again, they could easily have been discussing conservative media.

To that, of course, we would now add the current administration’s cozy relationship with white nationalists, white separatists, white supremacists, and other ethnic nationalist movements. The president calling poor African nations “shitholes,” along with long standing Republican efforts to spearhead the dismantling of affirmative action, the gerrymandering of African American voting districts and the support of Voter-ID laws which tend to disenfranchise poor and minority voters.

Also, like the putrid atmosphere of racism perpetuated by President Trump, perhaps the atmosphere in the corridors of conservative media is equally putrid and racist?

The numbers don’t lie. And .02% isn’t just a wake-up call. It’s a nuclear bomb to the balls.